The Keeper of the Threshold

It is not the plagiarism of the delirious novel by H.P. Lovecraft, but it could be said that it basically coincides with his approaches, if we consider the psychological background that is hidden behind these mysterious figures, generally known as guardian or guardians of the threshold and who, with greater or lesser emotional effectiveness, guard indolently any of those accesses that separate two worlds that are generally very specific, but intrinsically related: the physical and the spiritual. Although its most notable antecedents, are, generally, in the accesses to the temples, they are not alien, either, to another class of places and institutions.

Such is the case, for example, of a park that could be considered magical, if by magic we understand -part obviously, of the charm and fascination that always awaken the natural places-, the use of specific symbols, shrewdly routed to to awaken in the spectator some determined archetypes, lethargic in the depths of the psyche, that would come to constitute that other fascinating reality, which the great psychologist CG Jung called the collective unconscious. Becoming a hermeneut and pretending to delve, perhaps, into that deep and dark sea of consciousness, leads, at least, to awaken deep terrors contained in the genes of a humanity that was born trembling with fear in the depths of the caverns.

All the great civilizations knew how to take advantage of it and used it; even Christianity, probably based, above all, on the demons that conjured the model of models, that is, the Temple of Solomon, also allied with them, using them on the thresholds of their temples. In this magical garden to which we refer -which we will discover in a next entrance, when we take a wider walk through it-, this symbolic sentinel, in the figure of an imposing boar, planted on its hindquarters, attracts attention. , at the entrance of a cave or bridge, depending on how you look at it -in many occasions, they come to constitute a twin effect, symbolically speaking-, that could be considered as the threshold that separates, likewise, the two worlds to which it comes Making reference.

Their appearance, like the appearance of those terrible monsters or lions, which usually used to be a constant in the Romanesque temples -objects and subjects, on whose evolution and approach an interesting and voluminous treatise could be made- is just as sinister and threatening, and at least, it also invites reflection. And observing it and at the same time reflecting, one could also ask if the question that is really asking us, challenging us with its powerful fangs, is none other than this: do you dare to go further ?.

NOTICE to CHEETAH and NAVIGANTES: This entry belongs to my blog PLACES OF THE SPIRIT. Both the text and the photos are my exclusive property. The video that complements the entry, can view it at the following address: http://lugaresdelespiritu.blogspot.com/2015/10/el-guardian-del-umbral.html